


The Blood of a Timelord

by Lost_And_Longing



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Plot, Self-Harm, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2018-10-28 21:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10839723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_And_Longing/pseuds/Lost_And_Longing
Summary: The one who forgets. The one who forgets the millions, billions of people who have died because of him. But the Doctor has never forgotten, not really. He's weighed down by guilt uncountable, and a sad man in a blue box can only bear so much before he breaks.





	1. Chapter 1

The Oncoming Storm, they call him. The Destroyer of Worlds. The man who never used a weapon, but turned each of his companions into them instead. He'd annihilated planets, slaughtered billions. He'd destroyed his own people. He had seen his family, then his friends, die one by one. From the very beginning, he'd known he was responsible for River's death. 

The Doctor is not a good man. 

He leans his head against the TARDIS console and closes his eyes. For years, he'd blithely skated ahead of the guilt. For a while he'd even managed to escape it. Ten had been struck particularly hard by it, he remembered. It made sense that Eleven was when it finally caught up. It had taken him eleven lifetimes, but now there's no escaping.

The Doctor is  _not_ a good man. 

Lifetimes ago, worlds away and with a different face, he'd made a promise. _Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in._ The weight of the promise was pressing into his ribcage, crushing his hearts. He had worlds of time inside his head, ideas unfathomable to humans in his brain. He had saved countless worlds, had upheld his promise...

But, what happens when he's no longer upheld on that promise? What happens when the Doctor finally breaks? 

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. He knows already that it won't be long until he does. The guilt of billions presses on him. He has manipulated, and betrayed, and killed millions. He has hated it, hated knowing that this is  _his_ fault- but at the same time knowing that if he does nothing, he will break his promise. 

The Doctor is  _not a good man._ Some things can't be fixed with a sonic screw-driver and a joke. Some things simply have no fix. 

"Doctor?" 

Is that concern in River's voice? In her face as he turns around and plasters on a grin? "Oi, all right then! You ready? Where'd I say we'd go, the planet Diadem? Most relaxing place in that entire galaxy! It's like, all pools and beaches and-"

"Doctor." 

"-salons and suntanning, blimey, how is suntanning relaxing? It's just-"

"Doctor." 

"-sitting there exposed to ultra-violet rays that can potentially cause cells inside your body to mutate and kill you within years-"

_"Doctor."_

"-but you lot still do that, why?" 

River sighs.  _"Doctor!"_

He copies the sigh.  _"What?"_

She opens her mouth and for a second he panics, thinking that maybe- maybe she suspects something. Maybe he hasn't been as good of an actor as he thought. Maybe he let the facade slip for just one instant, and for just one instant she saw through him. He fights his nervous tics, hundreds of different realities playing out in his head- dozens of ways this one conversation could go.

"Doctor, I swear to God." River's expression is a mixture between exasperated and fond. "You  _still_ fly the TARDIS wrong."

He hides his relief, gives her an offended glare, and sputters, "Excuse me? If anything,  _you_ fly her wrong! Whoever taught you had no idea what they were saying!"

She rolls her eyes and walks past him, fingers dancing up his arms as she smirks at him. "I'd definitely agree with you on that, because you're the one that taught me." 

He gives her another offended look and resists the urge to pull his arm away from her.  _Keep it relaxed. Tensing up is just going to make her concerned._

"I-I'll have you know-" he runs his hands through his hair in what he hopes she'll think of as a natural gesture- "I- uh..." 

She bursts out laughing. "Still can't even come up with a good comeback, Doctor?" 

"I can come up with a perfectly good one," he retorts, glad when her touch finally leaves him. It's another thing he doesn't deserve; physical contact meant for something other than pain. He's caused enough pain; now it is the only thing he deserves. 

"Really now? Let's hear it, then." 

He opens his mouth, floundering for an answer and scowls when she grins triumphantly. He and River keep up their bickering, fighting over who gets the right to pilot (definitely him, in his opinion, although River obviously thinks differently) and finally landing on Diadem. The planet is just like he'd told her: perpetually sunny, filled with pools of every kind imaginable- and some kinds that aren't. 

Like he has for the past millennium, the Doctor keeps his mask firmly on, all the while sinking further and further into guilt every time his thoughts stray from the present. He remembers what his past self had said of him, of Ten.  _The one who regrets...and the one who forgets._ He'd spent this entire body trying to suppress what had nearly destroyed his previous self at times. Now it was flooding back. Now it was destroying him, warping him, twisting him into the old, old man alone in his box, carrying the blood of billions on his hands.

He plasters a smile on his face, plays along with River's flirting, and generally acts as okay as one possibly can. But all the while, in the midst of taking a vacation/trying to calm down the guards River manages to piss off, he's sinking deeper and deeper into guilt. 

He is the Doctor- a word that to some means warrior, and he is not a good man.

 

* * *

 

He's sitting in the med-bay, alone. River's off doing something the Doctor has a feeling he'd really rather not know about. The thoughts from earlier come back again, harsher, claws sinking into his vulnerable hearts and tearing.  _Destroyer,_ they sing, the thoughts almost tangible as he drifts in between sleeping and waking. Memories flash in front of him: loss, terrible loss. His family, his homeland, his people. His companions- dead, dying, lost, forgotten. All because of him. 

The Doctor is the fire that burns up worlds. He's the tsunami that threw Rose into another universe. He's the hurricane that turned Donna into a weapon, that made her forget everything about him. He's the tornado that tore Amy and Rory apart, that allowed the Angels to take them, to kill them slowly in the 1900s, and he's the destroyer that stole River's childhood, that forced her to grow up a murderer, that forced her to kill him and then be killed because of him. 

He withholds a sob, running one hand through his hair and the other on the smooth walls of the TARDIS. She hums comfortingly, and he's never felt so awful over being comforted in his entire life.

"Don't," he murmurs to her, gritting his teeth against traitorous tears. "I don't deserve you, Old Girl." She tries to say something else but the Doctor shuts her out, sliding down to the floor and hugging his knees to his chest. 

He feels like he's drowning; drowning in guilt, in shame, in grief. He has lost everyone he holds dear. No matter if River is still with him- he's seen her die. Eventually his days with her will run out, too, and he'll be alone once more, just a sad man in a blue box. 

Then he shakes himself out of his grief. All of it was his fault. It was his fault for not telling Rose how he felt; it was his fault for not stopping Donna before it was too late. It was his fault, in some way or another, for every companion that died or was lost. For Ace and Amy, for River, for Susan. They deserve so much more than his futile tears and useless apologies. No matter how many times his brain forms the thought, no matter how many times his lips form the words, they don't change the fact that he failed them.

He has failed in every way imaginable. He has murdered and has let others be murdered; he has betrayed, he has been apathetic. The Doctor is toxic, a poison that seeps through the air and affects everyone it touches like a disease. 

The Doctor lets out an ugly, desperate sob and clutches at his hair, pulling so hard that a few strands come out in his hand. "Stop, stop, stop, please stop." Now that he's opened the floodgates, everything has come pouring in at once. Every mistake in all his lives floods through him and he's powerless to stop it. He's barely even aware of what he's doing when he stands up and flees into the bathroom, not even sure what he's looking for until his fingers are dismantling a razor and then there's blood. 

As if suddenly brought back to reality, he freezes in shock at the pain. For a moment he's disoriented, barely remembering his flight to the bathroom or the razor or the blood- but he knows it must've happened because the razor's in his hand and the blood is on the floor. It's not like him to forget like that. It's not like him to forget what had happened mere seconds before, but everything's a blur and he suppresses another sob. 

He just stands there for a few seconds, reining in his emotions. He rarely lets them show like this, rarely allows them control. Time Lords are taught to control everything from a young age. They control their hearts, their brain functions, their emotions. Has he been alive so long he's forgotten? 

The Doctor looks back down at his arm. A thin trickle of blood drips slowly onto the floor, a red puddle spreading on the tile. He doesn't know what to think. On Earth as well as several other planets, he knows that it's what some life-forms use as a method of self-harm. Other planets have less rudimentary ways of it. His own, of course, frowned on any method of self-harm. Not because they thought, as humans do, that it was awful because 'nobody deserves that,' but because mutilating yourself in any way, mental or physical, was the worst way one could lose control. It was unseemly. 

But he'd always been the renegade. The Doctor looks at the razor. It hadn't felt like a loss of control; rather, it had been the way he'd gained control back. The pain had shocked him out of his mental agony. His people had been mistaken before, and God knows the humans definitely have, too. Surely this couldn't be bad if it was the only thing keeping him sane? 

His thoughts drift to River. Even if  _he_ doesn't think it's bad, as a partial human who's lived on Earth, he knows her views will be very different. And he knows also that revealing it to her would be very dangerous; because of their backwards timelines, he's never quite sure which River he'll meet. If the secret gets out with a younger her, an older version might come screaming at him the very next minute. 

He rinses the razor out and walks back to the med-bay. As high-tech as his TARDIS is, he has equipment that can instantly heal small lacerations like that and eliminate any scarring. But...he presses on the still bleeding cut. The pain sends a sharp zing through his brain, grounding him to the present. He's always alone nowadays. This might be the only thing that keeps him alive. 

A voice whispers,  _but is that really a good thing?_

He ignores it and reaches for a pack of Earth-made bandaids. For now, this is enough. This will keep him alive long enough for him to have one last futile effort at trying to be the Doctor. Not the warrior, not the Oncoming Storm. Just the man who saves people. 

And after that?

He doesn't know. 


	2. Chapter 2

It's been hours, days, weeks. A week? Two? He doesn't know. 

He gazes vacantly at his bare arms, at his naked legs, watches apathetically as tiny rivulets of blood run down the skin, staining it red. Staining the floor red. Staining everything red, red, red. 

He hates red. 

He can't remember the last time he got up and did something. Can't remember the last time he ate. Can't remember the last time he saw another being other than the ones in his guilt-ridden thoughts. All that remains is-

_Guilt._

_Pain._

_Loss._

And-

_Blood._

He stares at his hands, at the rust-red, almost brown blood caked in the nails, drying on his fingers. He wonders if the people he's killed are watching him now. He hopes they aren't satisfied with his penance yet.

He knows he's not. 

He has so much more to pay back, hasn't even gotten through his third life yet. He hasn't even begun to repay the genocide of entire races. 

He plays with the razor in his hand, blood- old and new- coating it so that barely a gleam of once-shiny silver remains. The urge to turn it, to drag it up his veins and end it all is so overwhelming he almost caves, but he stops himself just in time.  _Time for that later,_ he tells himself. He hasn't paid for his crimes yet. He won't let himself die until that's accomplished. 

The thought occurs to him- why is he still using this razor? Why indeed, when eons of history, billions of planets have created far worse ways to hurt? Drawing blood is practically primeval compared to other planets. There are ways to electrocute every cell in your body, to take out the bone marrow of every bone, ways to find and dig into the pain receptors in your brain. So many ways, outlawed because they drive people to insanity. Sometimes instantly. 

But the Doctor doesn't need sanity- was never really sane in the first place. A horrible, maniacal smile forms on a face pale and wan from starvation and dehydration. He's insane already! Why should he bother about that if he can end this quicker? If he can pay the price for everything faster? 

The Doctor heaves himself to his feet, barely registering the agony as a dozen cuts reopen and a dozen more sting. They aren't deep, definitely not deep enough to seriously injure. He was going to save that for his larger crimes. But now new ideas circulate his mind and he wonders how he could have spent so long tearing himself to shreds when there are far more effective ways to do so. Far more painful, far more long-lasting. 

He lets out a laugh, high-pitched and loud. It scares him just to hear. In the back of his mind he wonders if he's taking it too far. If he should stop, think about everything more rationally. But he's been drowning in _painsomuchpainsomuchguilt_ for too long. He flung any remnants of rationality into a black hole the moment he cut his flesh for the first time. 

Halfway to the console, he remembers he's bleeding and naked and hastily doubles back into the medbay where his clothes lie. After a brief hesitation, he heals over the still-bleeding injuries before he puts on his clothes. "I'll make up for it soon," he mutters to himself. 

He walks back to the console and is about to put in the coordinates for Tessen, the planet renowned for its brutal torture methods and also its eagerness to put them to use, when the distress bell begins to toll. 

It had been sounding on and off for the past  ~~week~~   ~~two weeks~~ however long it's been, but he'd thought the Old Girl had given up at last. He almost snaps at her and tells her to shut up, before his eyes widen and he realizes what she's telling him. 

When River had first walked into his life, the Doctor had set up an alarm system in order to tell when she was coming, mostly since she always seemed to be in huge trouble and he needed to react quickly. Although it didn't work a lot of the time since she didn't always come to him at the TARDIS, he'd kept it up still. 

It isn't the distress gong that's tolling right now. It's the 'River is coming within five minutes' bell. 

 _"Shit!"_ he yells, adding in a long string of various other curse words in various other languages. He scrambles back to his bedroom, praying to God she's in enough trouble she won't notice just how off he is. He frantically strips off his clothes and stuffs them in the back of his closet then jumps into the shower, shampooing his hair and washing his body as quickly as he possibly can. He hears footsteps coming down the hallway right as he finishes and glances around in terror, knowing the shut bathroom door won't do anything. Particularly if River's feeling frisky. 

He dashes out of the shower and flips the lock, cursing his lack of sonic screwdriver, then looks at himself in the mirror. His hair is sopping wet, his ribs and every other bone a prominent indicator of just how much he's been eating, and scores of white and red marks down his entire body show how well he's been doing since River saw him last. River's footsteps move through his bedroom, heels clacking against the floor, and she calls out his name. 

He towels himself off at a speed slightly less than that of light and pulls on boxers, pants, a shirt. First water, then blood seep through the thin fabric of his shirt and he curses silently as he shrugs into a jacket he'd grabbed in his blind flight to the bathroom. River knocks on the bathroom door and calls again, this time sounding a little impatient.

"Doctor, we may or may not have an entire squadron of Judoon on our tail right now. You planning on doing something about that?" 

"Do something about it yourself," he grumbles at the door, running a hand through his still-wet hair. "You're the one that got yourself into that mess, aren't you?" 

"Someone's a little grumpy, isn't he?" River begins moving away from the door and he lets out a relieved sigh. "Fine. But you owe me one."

"What!? How do  _I_ owe you one? I'm the one who's always saving-"

 _"Saving_ is a relative term, Sweetie," she calls, voice getting farther away. "I like to call it 'conveniently picking me up at the right time.'" 

He huffs but knows better than to argue with her. Instead he looks in the mirror once more, adjusts his jacket, and steps out. 

He has no idea what River's gotten him into, but he does know one thing: this is going to be a long night. 

 

* * *

 

It's not until the next day that the Doctor once more starts for Tessen. River had left last night, apparently eager to get back to a class she was teaching at her university. He was too relieved from not having to think up a way to avoid sleeping with her (and risking the detection of his countless new scars) that he'd just nodded. She'd given him a weird look but with any luck, he wouldn't meet this River again until she'd already forgotten about his strange behavior.

So now he sets the coordinates for Tessen, body aching from old, scarcely healed wounds and a new one he couldn't resist making. His body hums in anticipation of what's to come, and the Doctor isn't sure whether he looks forward to the pain or reviles it. He's seen firsthand what these tortures can do to people. He knows it won't be pretty. Especially not what he's planning to do. 

Several minutes later, he lands within the main facility on the planet. The Doctor steps out and immediately, instinctively flinches back. Tessen's atmosphere is partially toxic to almost every creature in the universe except the planet's natives. Although it won't kill you, its toxicity is painful on the lungs and also weakens those susceptible to it greatly. The Doctor had all but forgotten about that; now as he breathes, his lungs smart and he feels momentarily dizzy. 

Recovering himself, he takes the time to look around. Like he'd thought, he is inside the largest structure on Tessen- as it's a small planet, he isn't sure if it can quite be called a city. The sky is an ominous dark red with seven blazing suns in the sky. All the buildings are dark and strange, full of jutting spikes and rough edges. The Doctor tugs uncomfortably on his jacket collar, already feeling the intense heat that comes with Tessen's seven suns.

All in all, he reflects, the planet is exactly what it's purported to be: inhospitable and toxic, a Hell planet if there ever was one. He takes a deep breath (promptly regretting it when his lungs sting) and begins to walk towards the highest spire in the place, where he knows he'll find what he's come for. 

It takes half an hour to get to the building, and he is considerably weaker than he was when he first set foot on the planet. The atmosphere has only grown more poisonous since he last came here, it seems. He enters the building and steps up to one of the Tessinians, bowing politely and offering his psychic paper to it. Tessinians are much like their planet: dark, inhospitable, toxic. Like their buildings, they are covered in spiky protrusions- he'd heard once that the more the creature had, the older it was- and this one in particular has an abundance of spikes. It examines the paper and grunts, motioning him to go to one of the doors in the back marked with a single drop of liquid- the Tessinian symbol for torture. He bows once more to the creature and starts towards the door. 

Upon opening it, the Doctor flinches back once more, this time at the horrible screams that beset his ears. They're from so many different creatures, from Ghazt to cyborg to, astoundingly, even Dalek. That they could manage to get a Dalek to scream like that...

He realizes his hands are shaking and clenches them into fists, takes a deep breath. That he's about to willingly subject himself to this...

But how else will he repay his debt? How else indeed, except by tearing himself apart, offering himself up to the thousands of wronged innocents as a sacrifice. He walks up to another Tessinian, one currently involved in torturing another of its kind. He takes a deep breath and says in their language that he'd like to be tortured. The Tessinian laughs at him, harsh and guttural, and asks if he's crazy. 

"Perhaps," the Doctor responds with a grim smile. "But my request still stands. I...I believe I have something you might want in exchange." He'd considered giving his TARDIS up to them, but for scarcely an instant. His ship is a living thing, and the people of Tessen would realize that in a heartbeat. The Old Girl doesn't deserve the tortures they'd undoubtedly put her through as an 'experiment.' So instead, the Doctor reaches in his pocket and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. The Tessinian stares at it for a long moment, then turns to him.

"You are the Doctor," it says. 

"Yes." 

"But you are a good man. Why should you want torture?" 

The Doctor bites his lip and doesn't respond to that. Instead, he begins to tuck his screwdriver back into his jacket. "You don't want it, then? I wouldn't have thought you'd pass up the chance to-"

"Now, don't be so hasty. I was just asking. You are sure you want to do this, Doctor?" 

The Doctor takes another breath and looks around him. He sees the writhing forms of a half-dozen creatures, hears their agonized screams, watches what's being done to them. It would turn his stomach if he hadn't seen this all before, centuries ago.

He knows that if he says yes, he will be faced with a pain unrelenting, a pain so great it drives almost everyone insane. He knows he could very well die if he consents.

His breathing, his hearts, speed up. He forces himself to calm down, to slow down. Clenches and unclenches his hands. From this decision there will be no going back. Cutting his own flesh was one thing. What the Tessinians could do to him...

"Yes. I am." 

If the Tessinian notices how his voice quavers despite his best efforts, it says nothing. "Very well. Hand over the payment. What is it you'd like to have done?" 

And so the Last of the Time Lords hands over his only tool with a shaking hand and declares what he wants to have done to him. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic depictions of torture near the end of the chapter. Nothing extremely graphic, but enough to probably be mildly nauseating if you're a bit squeamish, so just be careful.

River's day had been going great until she walked headfirst into the TARDIS. 

At first, her brain takes a moment to realize what had just happened. The idea of seeing the TARDIS  _here,_ at her university, is such a rare occurrence she just stares at it for a moment, before a smile starts to form on her face. She can't believe it- the Doctor is actually taking her out for a date! 

"Hold on a second!" she yells to him, stepping back into her office and picking up her purse and gun- it never hurts to be too cautious, after all. She walks back up to the TARDIS and knocks, waiting for the Doctor to open the door for her. After all, isn't that was a gentleman does? But a few seconds pass by and no one opens the door. River's smile fades a little into annoyance, but then she rolls her eyes and decides he probably got stuck underneath the controls trying to fix something. What an idiot. So she opens the door herself and steps inside. 

Her eyes narrow. 

Gone is the warm lighting she's familiar with. Everything is dark, with faint blue lights just bright enough for River to make her way to the console...the console with no sign of the Doctor. Growing suspicious, she peers around the corner.

"Doctor? This better not be a prank. You know how I hate those." 

Silence.

"Doctor?" her voice wavers a little, her suspicion petering out and uncertainty creeping in. Something feels wrong. "Are you here?" 

Silence.

"I swear to God, Doctor, if this is all a joke I'm going to  _kill_ you-"

And then the distress bell tolls. 

"No," she whispers, freezing, the TARDIS's confirmation all she needs to know that something is horribly wrong. Something terrible is happening. She puts one hand on the console- to steady herself or to calm the Old Girl, no one will ever know. "Where is he? Where is he, girl?" 

Controls whiz, levers being pulled down. She glances frantically around the console for coordinates, for a time, sees...

"Tessen?" the name feels strange on her tongue. "What planet is that?" 

The TARDIS gives no response, but the floor rumbles and they tumble through space and time. River clutches onto the console, mouth set in a firm line as the TARDIS's motions almost send her to the floor. She tries to keep fear off her expression, out of her thoughts, but it creeps in no matter how hard she pushes back. Whenever the Doctor had been in trouble before, he'd had companions, like Rose and Martha and Donna and Amy and Rory. Rory or Rose's stability had kept him from doing something too daft, Amy or Donna's fire had helped him through the worst of it once he did. But now...now they were gone. All of them.

And, for a horrible instant, River wonders if this trouble isn't something she can save him from. 

The TARDIS lands. River checks the monitor and the vital report, frowning at the toxicity rate of the atmosphere. As a human, it's toxic enough to be deadly if she stays out too long. She steps to the door and takes several deep breaths, preparing her lungs for the coming ordeal. She doesn't let herself wonder about why her Doctor had come here; doesn't let the tiny voice in the back of her brain say that the timeline here is untwisted, flawless. There's nothing here to fix.

She takes a long, deep breath. Holds it. The voice whispers,  _what if he's the one who needs to be fixed?_

River opens the door, steps out. The heat hits her immediately and she clenches her teeth, looking around at the orange-red sky, the dark, twisted buildings. It feels like she just stepped foot into Hell. 

From what she'd learned about Tessen in the little time she'd had to scour her memory for something like that (as she'd never looked into the Time Vortex, she doesn't have all of time in her head; just gets voices whispering  _not right_ when a timeline is altered), it's a pretty small planet. Wherever the Doctor is, it shouldn't take long to find him. 

The problem is, where did he go? On a hell-planet like this one, what could the Doctor possibly want to do here? 

Unconsciously, she releases her breath. Her traitorous body breathes in a lungful of toxin and she gags, eyes watering from the pain. Well, that settles it. River opens the TARDIS door and steps back in. Until she can at least get a good idea of where the Doctor is, she won't be moving from this place. 

River steps back up to the monitor. "Is there anything special about this planet?" she asks the TARDIS. Generally, the ship doesn't answer questions like this, but today seems to be an exception. Lines of text run across the screen. River scans them.

_Tessen_

_Status: Planet_

_Galaxy: Heintjall_

_Population: Four hundred thousand_

_Native species: Tessinians_

_System of government: Democracy_

_Chief source(s) of income: Torture_

_Current..._

River blinks. Looks at the text again. 

Torture.

What kind of planet makes a living off of torture?

She closes her eyes, brow furrowing. What business could the Doctor possibly have on Tessen? What business could he have here that would alarm the TARDIS enough to pilot herself? No TARDIS is ever to leave its pilot's side, unless...

Several reasons flash through her mind. If he'd specifically instructed her to come find River...but no. That's not the Doctor's style. He wouldn't do that.

So what then? The Doctor has been in trouble countless times. What makes this different than any other? What alarmed the TARDIS  _so much_ she flew herself to River? 

River slowly opens her eyes.

_Chief source of income:_

Her heart sinks.

_Torture._

Someone...someone must've captured him. Someone must've decided they wanted information out of him, and so they brought him here to Tessen. To a planet so accustomed to torture they'd made an entire economy out of it. 

The things they would do to him...

Nausea surges, and River fights away the urge to vomit. Up until right then, she'd managed to keep calm and not believe the worst. But now...now the worst seems to already have happened.

The things they have most likely already done to him...

She runs down the stairs, runs to the door. Slams it open, sprints through it, already forming a plan in her mind. If torture is such an integral part to the Tessinian's society, then the Doctor, being the important hostage he is, will most likely be in the capitol or at least a place pretty high up in importance. Which probably means it'll be bigger than the other buildings around it. 

Every breath burns her lungs as she runs through the near-empty streets, but the adrenaline pumping through her system enables her to ignore it. Her eyes scan each building that comes across the horizon, and finally one taller than the others looms above her. River runs straight towards it, slowing down as she nears it in order not to rouse suspicion. She knows well that any human seen approaching the building might be seen as the Doctor's companion trying to free him. 

River opens the massive, black door and steps inside. An exceptionally large Tessinian- the only one in the room, despite several empty sitting places- grunts at her and asks her to show some identification. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her psychic paper. Hands it to the creature. It stares at the paper for a few seconds, then turns to her and raises its various appendages threateningly and calls out for guards. River frowns. Not so much because of the guards, but because they were called in the first place. It saw right through her psychic paper. Is that a characteristic of all Tessinians, or just this one? 

Three more Tessinians come into sight and she grabs her gun. As large as these things are, she's not entirely sure one shot, no matter how well placed, will kill them. For a moment she considers fleeing, but she came here for the Doctor. She's not leaving until she finds him. 

She takes a few steps back and uses the extra time to analyse the creatures. The amount of eyes they have seems to vary from creature to creature, but the average is around ten, placed at various spots on their grotesque bodies. Not seeing any other exploitable vulnerability, she aims for them. 

The moment her shot lands squarely on one of the eyes of the first creature, it screams and convulses, falling to the ground with a massive thud. River grimly treats the three remaining Tessinians the same way and starts running as alarms sound- one of them probably hit the alarm button on its way down. She runs up the stairs past a door marked with a drop of water, past several doors marked the same way. More Tessinians clamber into view, descending the stairs towards her. 

"Shit," she mutters, glancing back over her shoulder. Nothing back there- her only targets are right in front of her. At least that makes things a bit easier. But where could the Doctor be? Shouldn't there be some sort of high security measures somewhere in this building, if it's as important as she thought? 

She fires off eight quick rounds in order to stop the guards. Dammit- she needs to find him soon. God knows how long it took the TARDIS to even get to her- God knows how long he's been here. It could be an hour, a day, a week, a  _month_ for all she knows- how is she supposed to know when the TARDIS left to find her? 

"Dammit," she mutters, this time out loud. Anxiety builds in her stomach, mixing with the fear and dread already there. How much would it take to break him? Would even a day be enough, in a planet whose commerce is based on torture?

She goes to start up the next flight of stairs- the ones heaped with Tessinian bodies- and stops. 

...what was that sound?

River freezes when it happens again, faint enough to barely be heard above the blaring alarms, and looks at the doors marking the harsh, red-metal walls. At the liquid emblazoned on each door. She'd thought it was water, but what if it's supposed to be blood instead? 

There's another sound. It's faint, owing to the most likely soundproofed walls, but it's guttural and low and so terribly pained. Not- not the Doctor, that much she can tell. But it's the sound of a creature being tortured, and that means that the Doctor is nearby. He  _must_ be. She gazes around at the doors, all marked alike, all pristine in their own hellish way. There must be a dozen of them at least.

 _Well,_ she thinks grimly,  _I might as well get started._

She yanks the first door open and instantly takes an involuntary step back at the screams that beset her ears. There are so many, and all of them so pained, it's almost impossible to bear. Their throats are so hoarse with screaming some of them can only manage groans, low and broken. Listening to them feels like claws digging into her ears, her scalp, her chest.

Madame Kovarian had taught her many things, but never had she been asked to torture. River's job was to kill, and only to kill. To these creatures, she thinks it might even be a mercy. 

It takes her several seconds for her to regain her bearings. When she looks around, it's to see some sixteen or so creatures, each with a Tessinian associated with it, being tortured. The methods seem to differ for each one, and the mere sight of what some of these creatures are enduring is enough to turn her stomach. Only one of the beings is being tortured the traditional way, the way with knives and hammers to cut and tear, with tools to pluck hairs and nails and gouge eyes. The rest...

Some have their brains, or what passes for brains, exposed to view, with their torturers cruelly digging inside. Some air-bound creatures are waterboarded with acid just long enough to cause agonizing pain, before the acid is neutralized and the process begins again. Some have their flesh cut open to reveal bones which are methodically shattered and taken out of the body. And others...others are almost too gruesome to describe. Deadly poisonous insects from a dozen different planets eating the victims alive. Teeth, horns, and other such things slowly shoved deeper into the surrounding flesh and disrupting the surrounding nerves. Nerve endings being carefully torn to shreds. Sexual organs- the most sensitive ones in most organisms's bodies- being ripped apart. 

River only stays long enough to ensure that none of them are the Doctor. She hightails it out of there as quickly as she can. She shuts the door and leans against it, trying to control her breathing. The alarms blare on, but any Tessinian responders must have already cleared out of the vicinity. 

 _I don't know if I can endure this eleven more times,_ she thinks. She feels bile rising in her throat. What she'd just witnessed is far worse than anything she's ever seen on the battlefield. Mutilations, agonizing deaths, nothing she's seen before could ever compare to what these creatures are enduring. The mere sight is so far beyond revolting the emotion's almost unidentifiable. But she forces herself to breath, to calm down.  _I have to do this. Whatever he's experiencing is far worse than my discomfort._

The next door brings much the same. There's a dalek in there screaming its insane scream, and that more than anything terrifies her. That these Tessinians could break a dalek- thatthey _managed_ to break a dalek- is not something she wants to think about. But as she glances about, she once again comes up short. The Doctor is not in here, either. Although she'd hardly expected to find him in the first or second room, she can't help but harbor doubt. What if she's searching the wrong places? What if he gets hurt even more from her wasting time like this?

River shuts the door behind her as she exits, takes a deep breath, crosses the hall, and goes to the next door.

Doors four, five, six, and seven all yield the same result. With each one, River gets more and more agitated, more and more sure she's looking in the wrong place. But the chance that he's in one of the remaining doors is too large for her to ignore. Not when he could possibly be so close to her. 

She opens door eight and steps in. She's almost gotten used to the horrid sounds: the screaming issuing from dozens of differently made organisms; the tiny, squishing sounds made from tearing up nerves or skin; the splashing of acid; the occasional shriek of newcomers with throats still fresh enough to properly scream. But the images...even if she lived as long as a Time Lord, she'd still never get those images out of her head. 

Door eight is different. River notes that immediately. Whereas most rooms had had somewhere between twelve to twenty occupants, this one only has six. All six are humanoid. She looks at number one; at two and three and four and five... 

Her gaze falls onto the sixth. 

She almost turns away. Almost. She almost turns her back and walks out the door and continues her search for the Doctor in the wrong direction.

Because...because the creature chained down and screaming, hooked to a machine she didn't see in any of the other rooms, looks so little like her Doctor she almost doesn't recognize him. 

His screams are raw and ragged and like nothing she's ever heard, neither from him nor from any of the others in these rooms. She can  _hear_ how much it must hurt him to scream so, but his pain is so great he has no other outlet. No escape. Nothing. Nothing but pain, and...and...

"Oh, Doctor," she whispers, "what have they done to you?" 


	4. Chapter 4

"Oh, Doctor," she whispers, "What have they done to you?"

The reason she didn't recognize him isn't because he is bleeding, nor because his bones are shattered or he's submerged in acid or surrounded by flesh-eating scorpions. The reason she didn't recognize him is because he isn't...he isn't all there. 

All of his hair, that hair he'd been so absurdly proud of despite pretending otherwise, all of it is gone. His nails are gone, but blood doesn't seep out from the holes. All over his naked body are patches of raw skin where the epidermis has been pared down. Some patches even go past the epidermis, all the way to the dermis and hypodermis, but even then no blood leaks out. 

As she watches, one tiny patch of hypodermis-pared skin glows a brilliant white and he  _screams._ It's the most horrible sound she's ever heard. She's moving before she can stop herself, past an acid-boarded Ood, past oblivious Tessinian torturers, all the way to the back of the room. The light glows brighter. He screams more, but it cuts itself off with a harsh gurgle, like his throat finally gave out. 

She pulls out her gun in one swift motion and fires, hitting the torturer in four different eyes. It shrieks, louder than anything else in the room, and she sneers, disgusted, as it falls to the ground. Never has she wanted to cause pain more than to that creature, but she doesn't have the  _time._  She brushes past the Tessinian-

And it grabs her arm. "What do you think you're doing?" 

She glares down into one of its non-shot eyes. Her voice is low and furious. "I'm saving him, you bastard."

The Doctor is panting, letting out low, broken whimpers and grunts despite the fact that the machine's no longer running. He doesn't seem to recognize that she's there, or that his torturer has stopped, like the only thing he knows anymore is pain.

Her heart aches so much for him it almost breaks. Her Doctor, the one she stopped time for, reduced to this. All the sacrifices she made for him, all the lives she gave up, are all now rendered useless. None of it was enough to save him from this. 

The Tessinian moves, grunting from the pain of its shot eyes. River stares at it, just for a moment. Slowly, so very slowly, that aching agony inside her chest begins to burn. Begins to turn into white-hot rage. 

It turns to her and speaks. "Saving him from whom?" 

The Doctor lets out a groan that turns into a gurgle halfway through. And then she's done. 

"FROM YOU!" She aims at it again, satisfaction welling up as it steps backwards. "FROM  _YOU,_ YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!"

For the first time, she's thankful for the five screaming humanoids in the room, for the other Tessinians who don't even look up. 

But the Doctor's torturer doesn't flinch. It looks at her, and she thinks it  _smiles._ "Is it really my fault if he asked for it?" 

"You liar," she hisses, and shoots one of its appendages for good measure. "Don't you dare fucking lie to me." 

It grunts in agony and she's never felt such pleasure from another's pain in her life.

"I'm- I'm not," it wheezes. "He- he came to me yesterday. Off...offered me his...screwdriver in exchange for this."

It nods down to one of the machine's flat surfaces, where sure enough the Doctor's screwdriver rests. 

But River doesn't even hesitate, doesn't even consider that her Doctor would do something like this. Would willingly offer himself up for...for  _this._ She shoots it again. "Tell. Me. The. Truth." 

"I'm telling the truth! I swear on the Matron!"

From what River had gleaned about Tessen, they believed in one god, a goddess known as the Matron. To swear to the Matron was the highest oath, and not to be taken lightly. She stares at it for a long moment.  _Could_ it be telling the truth? Could the Doctor have...?

 _No,_ her mind screams at her.  _No, that's impossible. He wouldn't do that! He would never-_

But what if, after Amy and Rory had died, he'd finally let his guilt overcome him? What if what River had told him at Demon's Run had finally sunk in?

"Release him," she commands, but her voice is shaky now. "Release him and I'll let you live." 

 _For now,_ she adds silently. Whether the Doctor wanted this or not, there will still be Hell to pay from the one who tortured him. 

The Tessinian carefully backs up to the controls and presses a few buttons. River aims at it, ready to shoot in case it tries to start the machine up again, but the bonds restraining the Doctor retract and he thuds to the ground. He lets out a low cry and River snaps, "Gently!"

Still keeping her gun trained on the creature, she walks over to the Doctor, shoes clicking against the spotless tile. Somehow, its sheer cleanliness is more revolting to her than the thousands of blood and vomit-stained tiles she'd seen in other rooms. As she stands above him, she hesitates. Alone, she knows she could get herself off of Tessen without too much of a problem. But with the Doctor...

River looks back up at the Tessinian. "What are you called?" 

It opens its mouth and lets out a series of syllables that, even with the TARDIS's translator, are basically impossible to understand. Apparently seeing her expression, it adds, "You can just call me Trax." 

"Trax, then. You will help me get him out of here." 

"Or what?" 

She stares straight into one of its bulbous, disgusting eyes. "I've made a Dalek beg for mercy. You don't want to try me." 

It stares at her; she stares back. Holds its gaze. Holds it and  _holds_ it. Holds it until Trax finally looks away. "It is a rite of passage around here to make a Dalek scream. Don't think of yourself too highly." But it backs up as she lifts her gun again, cowering behind the control panel of the torture machine. 

"If you help me," she says, "I'll pay you the same amount you'd be paid for torturing him. I've looked it up-"  _lie-_ "and I have the amount ready to go." _Lie._

But she'll worry about angry Tessinian torturers later, after she's gotten the Doctor safe. "If you don't...well, you've probably tortured enough creatures to know what happens to you if you turn us in." 

"Assuming you get out of here alive." It gives her the Tessinian version of a malicious smile. She glares at it, and for good measure, shoots it. "Okay, okay, fine! I'll help. You better pay me well for this." 

"That's what I like to hear," she purrs, turning her head back to the Doctor but leaving her gun where it was. "Whatever security protocols you have surrounding him, you take out. Now. Do not contact anyone. You will lead me out of here and back to my ship without getting either me or the Doctor caught. Am I understood?" 

Trax moves its appendages in what passes as a signal of affirmation. 

Still keeping one eye on Trax, River finally bends down and fully takes the Doctor in. Even though he's been off the machine for several minutes now, there's still no blood- not from his nonexistent nails, not from the hypodermal-pared skin. It's unnerving, almost enough to get her to ask Trax then and there what the hell it did to him, but...River purses her lips and puts one hand to his neck. The pulse is weak and faint, and she knows that, if it weren't for the machine's built-in life support functions, he'd have already regenerated. 

A chilling thought occurs.  _Can_ he regenerate? Has he used his last life up yet? Is it possible that the regeneration energy she gave him was enough to grant him more lives, or...or could he have really been that close to really, truly dying? 

River holsters her gun a little apprehensively. As gently as possible, River puts one arm around his shoulder and the other under his knees. He's unconscious now, so he only whimpers slightly as she hoists him up, bridal style. She is once more unnerved by how  _light_ he is. Despite the loss of cells, he shouldn't weigh  _this_ little. The damage must be far greater than she'd thought. 

"Lead the way, Trax," she says coolly, all too aware that, if it turns on her, she'll have to set the Doctor down before she can shoot it. This puts her at a disadvantage, but it was hardly like she was going to tell the Doctor's torturer to carry him around. 

They walk through the room, past the pairs of torturer and tortured, all the way to the door. Trax opens it and motions for her to go through first; she narrows her eyes and stares at it until it finally caves and goes through instead. The alarms have finally quieted, River realizes as they begin to walk down the hall, River trailing slightly behind the Tessinian. The Doctor is light, so  _light._

Once they reach the lobby, River stiffens. The receptionists are back in their place.  _Shit._ She hadn't planned for that. "Is there a back door?" she whispers to Trax. She shifts the Doctor, throwing him over her shoulder and sliding her gun out. Carrying the Time Lord like this is awkward and won't last long, but if Trax gives them away she's going to need it. 

"No." Trax smiles. 

In one swift motion River draws her gun out all the way and fires. She kills two of the Tessinians within a second, the other two in the next. The four don't even know what hit them. 

"Why didn't you die when I shot you?" River questions as they take off again, Trax seemingly apathetic at its peoples' deaths. 

"Tessinian torturers are a special breed," it responds. "Just as you humans have humans smarter, stronger, faster than the others, so do we. We are selectively bred for torture: only the hardiest, mentally and physically, are allowed this honor." 

Honor?

Her hand trembles. She fights to put her gun away. 

River stares down at the Doctor. At that brokenness, that pain, that twisted, perverted  _wrong._

This...this was an  _honor?_

Trax exits the door to the street, unperturbed by its planet's toxic environment even as River tries not to gag too noticeably. River briefly gives instructions- only a few turns at a time, she knows, in case it should escape and bring back whatever passes for law enforcement on Tessen. She wonders, as her lungs sting with every step taken, if Trax really qualifies as an 'it.' It had said that Tessinians were 'bred,' but does that mean sexual or asexual reproduction? 

After a few seconds' pondering, River turns away from the thought with disgust. Why should Trax's gender matter? It doesn't matter if Trax is a she, a he, an it, or some other gender; Trax hurt her husband. It hurt the Doctor, and it thinks torture is an  _honor._ Her hands itch with the desire to end it quickly- surely only a few more shots would be enough to kill it- but...if she kills it now, the action might incite alarm. Above everything else, the Doctor needs to be kept safe. She'll worry about revenge later. 

Thirty minutes or so pass by in general silence. Trax leads her through backstreets and alleys- River keeping her gun trained on it during those times- dodging the few Tessinians out on the streets so close to...whatever time it is. The light is redder than it was when she first got here, but she has no idea if it means that's afternoon or dusk or dawn. 

Finally they reach a place River recognizes. "We're getting close," she tells Trax, lifting her hand from her gun to adjust the Doctor's position. It grunts in admission. A huge Tessinian comes into view and the two of them quickly duck, waiting for it to pass. River keeps a close eye on Trax, but like usual, it doesn't give even the slightest indication of wanting to give her away. Is it because it truly thinks she'll kill it the moment it tries something? Is it just apathetic towards everything and everyone except itself? She has no idea. 

Once the Tessinian passes out of sight, they continue on their way. River drops a little further behind, just enough that Trax's side-eyes can't track her anymore. She looks around, looks ahead...and stops.

A glint of blue among an endless sea of black and red. 

Trax falls to the ground with a heavy thud.

A tiny twitch runs up its body- not dead. Good. Earlier, she'd reconfigured her gun. The normal stun setting used for humans wouldn't have affected Tessinian physiology in the slightest, so she'd cranked it up almost as high as it could go. The result would be lethal to any human, but it had apparently done the trick for Trax. 

River glances around furtively, even though she already knows the streets are empty. With a final check to make sure Trax is well and truly out- even going to far as to jab it in an injured eye with the butt of her gun- she secures her gun and takes off running, as fast as she dares with the Doctor still limply lying on her shoulder. She makes the last few steps to the TARDIS, gives a hasty snap, and she's in.

Safe. 

But immediate safety doesn't mean the Doctor isn't still in an entirely different danger. She flips the lock in case Trax wasn't as out as she thought and scrambles up the steps to the console, flipping a few levers and sending them out into the time vortex. With any luck, the Old Girl will wander through the vortex for awhile, eliminating any unexpected and unwanted encounters from Daleks and the like. 

Once the TARDIS has finished dematerializing, River strides past the console and down the hall. The TARDIS lights are dim still; not as dim as they had been on River's flight to Tessen, but still much dimmer than usual. With every step her heart grows heavier, leaving a palpable, hollow ache within her chest. She doesn't want to set the Doctor down in the med-bay; doesn't want to come to terms with what has been done to him. Doesn't want to accept the pain he's gone through because she wasn't there to stop it. 

...the pain he's gone through because she was there, but didn't  _see_ it. 

But that thought opens a can of worms she isn't ready to deal with yet. River takes a deep breath and shakes her head, swatting the thought away like a pesky fly. She readjusts her grip on him and approaches the med-bay door. It slides open upon her approach. She steps in, stalks to the nearest bed, lays the Doctor down. The lights flicker on, illuminating the sterile, pristine surfaces of the med-bay. Illuminating so much more than that. 

What River had seen from brief inspections in a darkened room, from hurried glances in a red-sky planet...none of that could've prepared her for what lies before her now. 

"Oh, what have they done, what have they done to you, what _have they done,"_  she murmurs over and over again, that ache in her chest spreading, thickening into dread and horror and souring into fear. 

The Doctor is so light...so light and frail. The remaining epidermal portions of his skin are bone-white, stretched so tightly over bone and thin, weak muscle. The dermal and hypodermal portions are pink and red, fringed with deathly white. She can see nerve endings, muscles, tendons- even  _bones-_ poking through the skin. 

She glances upwards, eyes quickly passing over his exposed, pared down genitals, flicking up to his head. Every single hair is  _gone._ Like it was plucked, or...or...

River lets out a sigh that's mostly a sob. She doesn't need to lie to herself anymore. She knows exactly what's happened to him; has known from the beginning.

Trax was tearing the Doctor apart, atom by atom. Starting with the 'easier,' relatively effortless things like hair and skin, and slowly working its way in. 

River closes her eyes, hating herself for the tears that well up in them. Madame Kovarian hadn't cut out River's weakness after all, not entirely. She- she doesn't- she can't- River shakes her head, clenching and unclenching her fingers. She can't imagine the pain her Doctor must have been through. Humans always consider fire to be the worst pain imaginable, but for each atom to be systematically ruptured, for each cell and molecule to be shredded, torn, destroyed without mercy...

She wonders, could the Doctor possibly be sane after enduring that? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the big reveal scene about what the heck happened to the Doctor we all know and love.


	5. Chapter 5

There's screaming.

It's harsh and grating and rough. It hurts his ears. For a brief moment it holds his attention, but then the screech against his ears falls into the background. Falls to be replaced by the screech of his hearts. To be replaced by...

There are no words to describe it. 

There are no words to describe the pain; no words to capture the meaning of the red pounding through him, the red dripping out of him, the red in every pore, every bone, every nerve of his body. 

Nothing.

There is no end and there is no beginning. Just deep, vast, infinite and unrelenting agony, so great he slowly suffocates in a grave of anguish. 

He has just enough clarity of mind to wish he were six feet under. 

It is fire and it is ice and it is rage, but he is not the heart of the storm. He is simply the unfortunate, unwilling victim, and the pain is the torment of a dying star inside him. It burns him and freezes him and tears him to pieces, but the screaming still continues, on and on and on. He wonders, in the rare moments where the ice melts and the fire quiets, if it will ever stop.

Ice-cold knives bite his flesh. Acid feeds the flames surging through him. The screaming continues with the pain and he wonders if maybe it _is_ the pain; wonders if maybe it's causing it. 

Maybe this is Hell, he thinks as the screaming grows hoarser, more broken. Maybe he's already six feet under. Maybe this is simply what he deserves.

His body protests, screaming along with the scream against his ears, but he forges on, forces himself to think. Maybe he's finally getting what he deserves- and the fact that he would do anything,  _anything_ to get out of here is simply a further sign of his unworthiness. 

Ash tastes against his tongue again, and he's submerged inside pain once more, conscious of nothing except agony. Just agony, only agony, for days and months and years. 

It takes until the fire has melded into his flesh for him to realize it. That the screaming- it's him. He'sscreaming. 

The screaming continues with the pain, and the pain remains. It remains even as the screams grow rough and low and muted, remains even after the screams stop from a new fire starting in his throat. Remains even as water trickles in, as water flows to his feet...and stops, just short of putting out the flames.

He supposes he shouldn't be surprised. He's in Hell, after all.

_"What do you think you're doing?"_

_"I'm saving him, you bastard."_

The fire flickers, stutters. He doesn't let himself think, because thinking means  _just a madman in a box-_

_Oncoming Storm-_

_never cruelorcowardly-_

And he's already insane enough. 

No, he doesn't think anymore. He just feels. 

The ice begins to thaw, but as it thaws the fire roars inside him. It roars, like...like one of those animals on Earth, like...

_No, no don't think, don't think-_

_never cruel or cowardly-_

_Destroyer of Worlds-_

_never giveupnever-_

And he's lost, lost inside a swirl of snowflakes and embers, lost inside the smoke of a thousand fires and the glint of a thousand knives. Darkness corrodes him like acid. Light shrieks in front of closed eyelids. The knives grin at him, mocking him. They pare away flesh, and the fire blazes up, but...no. No, that's not right. That isn't right. That  _can't_ be right.

Can it?

But his eyes are closed and the silver is gone and so are the grinning knives, and there's nothing but the heat of a thousand burning stars and the cold of a million frozen galaxies. 

_"Release him. Release him and I'll let you live."_

There's more screaming, he thinks. But his throat is still on fire, and isn't it just him, just him in Hell? Isn't he the only one in this empty void of agony?

He tries, he really does try, to think. He tries to discern who the screams are coming from, tries to move, to think, to do something.But a murmur like a silver river trickles through his head,  _this was exactly you, all of this you make them so afraid_ and he's drowning once more, except this time it's not a river, it's a pond. Two ponds. Two blood-filled ponds he's submerged inside, and they shriek only  _all your fault, Doctor._

He thinks he might scream, again, because the fire in his throat intensifies and the screaming outside him starts up once again. Except it doesn't quite sound like screaming, really, but he doesn't have words for anything but scream, because scream means pain and the only thing in Hell is pain. 

_"I've made a Dalek beg for mercy. You don't want to try me."_

Then everything blurs suddenly, and the whole world is awash with sounds and colors and senses, but none of them makes sense. He's moving, but  _he_ isn't moving. There's water around him, an entire river of water around him, but he doesn't feel its coolness. Instead, the heat increases, increases, increases, fanning the inferno of agony. 

He faintly registers a tiny, muted scream coming from himself. Everything's fading, fading away into bluesilverredgold and pain, pain, pain. The river's still there, but the river's harsh and hot and fiery, and the river sings  _all your fault, all your fault, all your fault._

He screams again.

He's burning. He's truly burning in Hell for what he's done.

And somewhere deep within him, past the desperate pleas for relief, there's a sense of rightness. 

This is what he deserves, after all.

 

* * *

 

The world is balanced on a needle.

The world is balanced on a needle, and it is spinning, spinning, spinning, round and round like a merry-go-round at a park. There are lights in the park, lights and sounds and colors: white and blue, blue and red.

He turns away.

He hates red, hates it hates it hates it. But then the sounds are red, are loud and red like blood, and he flinches and-

The world  _i_ _s_ a needle. Because it hurts and he hurts and the air is sharp and silver and biting against his lungs. Then there are sounds like pricking thorns, asking...asking something. 

_"Oh, what have they done, what have they done to you, what _have they done?"_  _

But the sounds are red still, and he hates red. And so he shuts it out, shuts out everything except silver air. But there are still needles, needles, needles. And there's the scent against his nose, sharp and pungent blue, but this blue he doesn't like. It isn't like the needle.

No, no. That isn't right. Blue...blue is good. Blue is...

What is blue?

_"C'mon, keep your eyes open, Doctor. Don't you dare die on me. Don't you fucking dare!"_

Blue is Daleks and rivers and stars, but his mind sings  _not right not right not right_ and there is something else blue, isn't there? Something important. But the world is a needle, and  _he_ is the needle, and he is the world. And maybe there is nothing important except needles and silver and blue.

But the river, the river keeps roaring in his ear and it's red, but rivers aren't red. Rivers aren't red and needles are silver, not blue, and something is  _not right not right._ He is the needle and the needle is the world, but the world is shaking and the world is  _red_ but needles are silver, not red.

Then red sounds turn white and he tries to move but can't. And he's confused, confused in this world of silver and harsh metal. Isn't white good? White is good, and so is silver and blue, but he can't move. His left side fades black, fades away. He can't feel it anymore.

 _"Don't you dare give up on me. You restart that heart, you hear? You are going to restart that heart, and you are going to live, got it? I am_ not  _losing you, too."_

Black...it feels so good, so nice. So far away from red. The red river says black is bad, but could it really be? Black is quiet and calm and numb. Black is away from silver needles and red sounds, and maybe he doesn't have to be the world anymore if he can just be black.

The red river darkens, and so do the other colors. Silver turns gray; blue turns dark. The ringing in his ears quiets. Red fades away, leaving behind only dull, dark blankness. It's comforting, almost. But then silver screeches against him, inside him, and somewhere, through  _insanity just a madman in a box all your fault_ he recognizes that he's breathing. 

Barely.

_"Stay with me!"_

He realizes that he's dying.

Quickly.

_"Come on! Stay awake, damn you!"_

Not even in the deepest recesses of his mind is there regret. He deserves this. He deserves death after everything he's done.

But silver screeches again, and he frowns. 

He just...wishes it were more painful. After everything he's done, he deserves to die the most painful death imaginable. Why, then, does he feel nothing? 

Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps he isn't dying, after all. Perhaps he isn't in Hell, after all. Perhaps the moment of lucidity he's been granted is a precursor to consciousness. Perhaps he will wake up, and everything will once again be  _fine._

That's one thing he's taken from the humans: their definition of  _fine._

Perhaps he'll wake up, and he'll once more have to slip into that facade of unstoppable, unbeatable, unbreakable. The madman in a blue box. The liar, the man who always finds something to laugh about in the face of an apocalypse. 

The mere thought of that threatens to send him spiraling back into insanity. He can feel it; feel the darkness pressing in on him, hints of vivid colors and sounds his brain struggles to process correctly. His consciousness is flagging, and the blackness encompassing his left side is thickening and spreading, towards his right side and up to his head. Blood roars through his brain, but it feels cold, cold like-

Death.

Like death, like Hell, like darkness and ice and-

And then death swallows him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'this was exactly you, all of this, you make them so afraid' line in the chapter is actually a quote from A Good Man Goes to War. It's exactly what River tells him when she shows up at the end of the episode to give him a nice lecture. 
> 
> In other notes...well, that was my attempt at writing an insane person without actually ever having been insane myself. I tried to just use a bunch of different senses and jumble them all up. Colors equal sounds- red sounds are loud sounds, for instance- or other senses, like how silver is the various medical stuff he's hooked up to in the medbay. Um, it was probably pretty hard to actually get through this chapter, so congrats if you actually managed it lol


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